


with the kisses of his mouth

by animeangelriku



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), First Kiss, Getting Together, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Love Confessions, M/M, Post-Almost Apocalypse (Good Omens), Post-Canon, Post-Scene: The Ritz (Good Omens), Requited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:40:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28333272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/animeangelriku/pseuds/animeangelriku
Summary: Outside the Ritz, Aziraphale takes Crowley’s arm and then just… keeps his hand. Hands. There. On Crowley’s arm.HoldingCrowley’s arm.“Is this okay?”Yes,Crowley barely holds back.Yes, yes, yes. Touch me. Hold me. Never let me go. Never let go, angel, please, not now that we’re here.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 84
Kudos: 230





	with the kisses of his mouth

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Good Omens Secret Santa organized by mabsgatos on Tumblr, and even though it was not my giftee's prompt, I still hope they very much like it. I've been struggling so much with writing and life in general, so I tried to make this a happy, sweet thing, but it might have ended up a lot more feelsy than I intended. My apologies. It's still very soft, I promise!

Crowley is a lot of things, okay? But he’s not an idiot. He’s not blind. In fact, he’s got incredible eyesight, very reliable, his eyes of a snake, if he says so himself, thank you very much. 

He knows he’s been tit over arse in love with Aziraphale for ages. Centuries, millennia, so long he’s lost count. 

(He hasn’t, actually, but no one needs to know that.)

Still, again, Crowley is not stupid. He knows when having hope is useless, when it’s better not to think about it and simply let a river run its course. He knows how to _deal_ with things. At the very least, he knows how to adapt, how to change his demeanour and pretend like he knows exactly what to do in any given situation. 

He knows the universe is not often in his favour. He knows not to expect anything, not to hope for things he knows he can’t have.

He knows he and Aziraphale will probably never be more than what they are now, and what they are now is a very delicate balance between “friends” and “possibly more than friends, maybe even openly _best_ friends, but I wouldn’t be too optimistic about it,” and he’s not stupid enough to do anything to jeopardize that balance, to tip them off too far across a line they can’t cross back. 

Crowley has already lost Aziraphale once. He will not lose him again—not now that they are finally free. And yet, he does not want to burn the angel out so soon, so he’s perfectly willing to drive Aziraphale to his bookshop so he can spend a few days or a week with his beloved books. In the meantime, Crowley is fine staying at his flat, waiting for Aziraphale to invite him over to get absolutely sloshed. 

So it comes as a bit of a surprise, naturally, that right as they step foot outside the Ritz, Aziraphale takes Crowley’s arm and then just… keeps his hand. Hands. There. On Crowley’s arm. _Holding_ Crowley’s arm. 

It would not be an exaggeration to say that the only thing Crowley’s mind can come up with is a sound that, in readable letters, would translate to _Ngk_. If Crowley believed himself to be younger than he is, even by human standards, perhaps he would even describe it as something akin to verbal key-smashing. 

As it is, he just inhales sharply, quietly, and stops in his tracks. 

He very pointedly does not look at his arm, or at Aziraphale’s hands. Instead, he looks at Aziraphale, who is staring back at him from beneath his eyelashes almost shyly, a pinkness to his face that Crowley has seldom seen before. Never so openly, anyway. 

“Is…” Aziraphale is the one to glance down at his hands on Crowley’s arm. “Is this okay?”

 _Yes,_ Crowley barely holds back. _Yes, yes, yes. Touch me. Hold me. Never let me go. Never let go, angel, please, not now that we’re here._

“Yeah,” he ends up saying, staring at Aziraphale’s hair. He still can’t bring himself to push his eyes down to his arm, beginning to sweat under the angel’s touch. “Yeah, angel, ‘s fine.”

Aziraphale lifts his head, and the giddy smile on his face and the roundness of his cheeks remind Crowley, just a bit, of Warlock as a little boy, when his dear Nanny Ashtoreth slipped him a biscuit after dinner, even though he wasn’t supposed to have it. 

“Oh,” Aziraphale says, more of an exhale than a word. “Good. Jolly good.” 

The angel tightens his grip on Crowley’s arm, too slightly for it to be noticeable to anyone who hasn’t been attuned to Aziraphale for more than four thousand years, but Crowley feels it. He feels the way Aziraphale’s fingers press gently yet firmly against his jacket-covered arm, like he wants to reach the skin beneath, like he wants to stake a claim on him, and that thought makes Crowley flush all the way down to his toes.

 _You don’t have to stake a claim on me for everyone to see, angel,_ he thinks, kind of hysterically, if he’s being honest. _I’m already yours, always have been, ever since I can remember._

“So.” Crowley clears his throat. “Where to now, angel?” he asks, trying not to desperately smother the hope beginning to burn inside him, because this _must_ mean something, right? This _has_ to mean something, to _be_ something, Aziraphale has never held him, _touched_ him, surely this means—

This means…

“If it’s not too much trouble, my dear boy,” Aziraphale says, and Crowley prepares himself for the only logical follow-up to that sentence. “And of course you’re allowed to say no, I would never want to impose on you—” Yes, okay, this is more familiar territory, Crowley can handle this. “—but, well, I was wondering…”

“Yes, angel?” Crowley prompts, wanting to have some sort of control back. 

“If we could go back to yours?”

The sound Crowley’s brain does now is the very cartoonish sound of a scratched record. He’s dimly aware that they are still standing right outside the Ritz, standing there like a perfect pair of idiots, but he can’t help himself, he can’t make himself move, he’s just standing there with his feet glued to the ground because Aziraphale just asked him if they could go back to his flat instead of asking to be dropped off at his bookshop and his mouth can’t form words, can’t come up with anything to say, he’s tongue-tied and beginning to sweat and his hands are getting all clammy and damp and he’s still. Just. Standing. _There._

“Perhaps we could have a celebratory drink?” Aziraphale says. Crowley nearly blurts out that he thought they’d already had their celebratory drink, but who is he to deny his angel anything he wants? If Aziraphale wants to get sloshed at his flat, by no means will Crowley be the one to stop him.

“You sure?” he asks, because half of him is convinced he’s dreaming. He needs to be sure. Or, well, as sure as he can be with the current weird, dream-like circumstances, anyway.

“Very much so, dearest.” 

_Dearest._ Aziraphale has never called him that. Dear, yes. _My_ dear, yes. Never dearest. _Dearest_ is somehow so much _more_ than any sort of pet name in the angel’s repertoire that Crowley’s ears burn. 

“But only if you are as well,” Aziraphale adds, reading Crowley’s silence as hesitance instead of sheer fucking disbelief that this is happening. That this is Aziraphale, as sure as Crowley doesn’t remember him being at any point in all the years they have known each other, gently making his way past the lines they’ve kept in place for millennia, pushing them into territory even Crowley has seldom dared imagine.

“’Course,” Crowley mutters under his breath, refusing to clear his throat and repeat it louder. He’s a _demon,_ damn it. He’s got to maintain some shred of pride or dignity. “’Course we can, angel.”

Aziraphale’s smile is the brightest thing Crowley has ever seen. 

“Good,” he repeats, another exhalation, and starts walking, gently tugging Crowley along.

They don’t say anything on the way to Crowley’s flat. There haven’t been many times in the past where they walked side by side like this, and when they have, it hasn’t been in complete silence like they are now. Crowley’s skin itches with the urge to reach out, to touch back, but he’s still scared of crossing a line he can’t currently see, or pushing too hard, of asking for too much. He keeps his hands in his pockets and tries not to be so obvious about sneaking glances at the angel without him noticing.

When they finally reach Crowley’s building, he miracles the door open with a tilt of his head, not wanting to interrupt the pace they’ve been holding. Next to him, he hears Aziraphale chuckle quietly and feels him gripping his arm a little tighter, his own arms making themselves more comfortable around Crowley’s.

Like a snake, Crowley thinks, and almost snorts.

Another tilt of his head opens the door to his flat and a snap of his fingers closes it behind them. He makes to head straight to the kitchen, but Aziraphale stops behind him, and even though his grip is not rough, it’s strong enough to pull Crowley back all the same.

Before Crowley can point out that he can’t get to pour them a drink with the angel still holding him by the arm ( _You can come with me,_ he nearly says, desperately, _you don’t have to stop holding me, ever, you can be with me always, I want you to_ ), Aziraphale turns to stand in front of him. His smile, impossibly, widens, and one of his hands reaches up to curl softly, gently, around Crowley’s cheek. 

It’s the first time Aziraphale’s skin has touched Crowley’s. 

Besides the odd, accidental brush of hands or the light bumping of shoulders when they walked a bit too close to one another or the short grip of a handshake, they have never touched—especially not like this. 

Crowley’s cheek burns where Aziraphale’s palm presses against his flesh, his hold careful yet firm, cupping Crowley’s face with a very subtle hint of protectiveness, of fierceness. Of possession. Crowley feels more than hears Aziraphale inhale deeply, like he does before a particularly flavourful dish, and his body almost bursts into flames.

_I know what you smell like. Do you know what I smell like, too? Do you want to?_

Aziraphale smiles at Crowley so brightly, so splendidly, that Crowley has the urge to turn his head somewhere else, but he forces himself to stay still. He will not ruin this. He _won’t._

“Aziraphale,” he mumbles anyway, can’t help it, he needs to know. He needs to. He can’t bear not knowing. “What… what is… Are you…?”

The words stick treacherously to his throat, and Crowley lets out a frustrated hiss. He vanishes his dark lenses with a thought and stares into Aziraphale’s shining eyes, knowing his own are most likely entirely yellow now.

Aziraphale does not step back. In fact, he takes a step forward, the hand still on Crowley’s arm cupping his other cheek, his thumbs running through the skin, a caress so careful and tender that Crowley wants to curl into it, to curl into Aziraphale until he’s surrounded by him.

“Oh, my dear heart,” Aziraphale says, whispers, sighs, fingers twitching against Crowley’s face like they want to cup the very essence beneath his physical corporation, and Crowley can only let the air out of his ridiculously human lungs. “You’ve been so wonderful, so patient with me. I’ve held out on you for so long, haven’t I?”

“No,” Crowley tells him, shaking his head, his own arms snaking around Aziraphale, palms pressed against his spine, pulling him closer, and Aziraphale goes willingly. “No, never.”

“You must know,” Aziraphale continues, his features etched with something Crowley hesitates to call admiration, devotion, despite knowing perfectly well how that looks on his own face, “how dear you are to me, how precious you are to me. How much you mean to me, my beautiful darling. Oh, Crowley, I want…”

“Anything,” Crowley mumbles under his breath, their heads so close that their noses brush together. “Anything, angel, it’s yours.”

 _I’m yours,_ he thinks wildly. _I’m yours, Aziraphale, for as long as you’ll have me, please have me, please have me, I’m giving everything I am to you._

“May I kiss you?” Aziraphale asks, and Crowley nods one second and in the next one he’s being kissed for the first time in his life. 

The first press of their lips together makes Crowley whine in the back of his throat, his hands settling on Aziraphale’s shoulders to hold him as close as he can, to tilt his head slightly so he can kiss Aziraphale again, better, deeper. Aziraphale sighs against his mouth, his lips soft and sweet and tasting so much of wine that Crowley kisses each of them in turn, sucking the remains of alcohol from them, nibbling, licking, kissing Aziraphale’s mouth over and over until they’re clutching each other desperately. 

They kiss and kiss and kiss and kiss because the world is not ending and they are free and they are alive to kiss for as long as they damn well please and that’s that.

It is several minutes, or possibly several hours, before they break apart, only going so far as to brush their mouths together when Aziraphale speaks, breathless.

“Oh, my love,” he says, and Crowley is absolutely ruined, and he would not have it any other way. “My darling, my dearest. Oh, how I adore you.” 

He has never been good with words. His mind processes them faster than his mouth can, but that doesn’t stop him from trying.

 _I can’t remember what it is like not to love you._

“Angel,” he says, wrecked, hoping Aziraphale understands. 

He does, of course. He always does.

“Shall we have that celebratory drink now?” the angel asks cheekily, and Crowley playfully nips his lower lip before taking his hand and leading them to the kitchen.

Later, arms wrapped around each other as they lie on the suddenly much more comfortable couch of Crowley’s living room, Aziraphale’s lips still taste like wine, and Crowley kisses him until the sweet bitterness of alcohol is gone and all he can taste is the love woven into the shape of Aziraphale’s mouth.

**Author's Note:**

> I am absolutely starved for validation, so if you liked this, please consider leaving a comment!


End file.
